The City Naturalist

An Introduction to The City Naturalist

The City Naturalist is a nature guide to Central Park,
Riverside Park, and the lower Hudson estuary. It
helps you discover the animals and plants that
can be seen in and around New York City's parks
and rivers, rooftops, and skies.

This guide has been compiled by Leslie Day, an
environmental educator, an avid nature lover, and
a long-term resident of the 79th Street Boat
Basin.

The Upper West Side, nestled
between Central Park with its woods,
meadows, and the many bodies of freshwater that make up
its wetlands, and Riverside Park which
runs alongside the Hudson River, offers particularly rich
and diverse habitats for native and exotic species of
plants and animals. Throughout the seasons there are
places to go to see birds, insects, amphibians, fish,
reptiles, mammals and the trees and wild flowers that
abound in the still natural places of the Upper West Side
that can be found in our parks. By knowing where to look,
how to look and what to look for, the parks you have
walked through for years on your way to work, or to
attend Little League games, will be transformed by seeing
a Red tailed hawk soaring
overhead, or a Black crowned
night heron fishing in the Hudson or in the lakes of
Central Park, or the spring flowering of our deciduous
trees, such as the Basswood.

The
City Naturalist, through photographs and textual
biographies will teach you about the plants and animals
that live year round or, in the case of birds, migrate to
or over the Upper West Side.

Why study nature in the city?

When you study plants and animals, you enter into
their world, which in Central Park and Riverside Park, is
beautiful, peaceful, and exciting. When you look closely,
your senses are heightened. You learn how to look and
listen and take in information through your senses. This
is what children do and what, as adults, makes us feel
alive and "in touch with our surroundings. The study
of the natural world helps us become in touch with
ourselves: our skills and abilities and our humanity.

Once you learn to love learning about plants and
animals by observing them in the field, you start to care
more and more for their "homes" or habitats:
their woods, hillsides, ponds, streams, rivers and lakes.
You begin to realize that if that particular lake becomes
polluted, the waterfowl that depend on returning to it
each spring in order to nest, raise their young, and
feed, will stop coming. You start to realize that if the
trees on that hillside die and are not replaced, the
songbirds that nest in them and use them for protection,
will no longer be able to return. You start to value in
new ways the wonderful and historic Central Park and
Riverside Park that we New Yorkers have been fortunate
enough to have for over a century. And once you start to
value our parks as a home for birds and other animals,
and the plants these animals depend on, you develop a
sense of "stewardship" which leads to an
environmental awareness that results in your becoming an
advocate and protector of our parks.